Day 3902 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 11:12 NIV

Not if

No, for truth is that we’re no longer deserving of such a potential for our collectively avoiding what we’ve all but collectively demanded He disprove in what are ways of being evidenced that can literally only be proven via either the happening of nothing or rather a complete and utter destruction. And indeed, it’s a very strange thing, this world in which still we walk asking God still to talk and tell them all they want to hear as is to be heard by ears unwilling to listen. Not unable, no, though there are some who do have such literal disabilities.

Just unwilling.

Which is to be proven someday itself quite disabling, but not in terms such as hearing or seeing as in the sights and sounds of both a world falling down and a Word crying out to come and find refuge from the rage of this place. No, what will rather be proven is an eternal inability to escape the coming calamity. For there is said to be only a great weeping and gnashing of teeth upon that day in which we all will meet what is the outcome of our life’s chosen direction.

And we’ll have none to help us so leave the place in which we land as, well, we’ll either be welcomed through Heaven’s gates and once there never understand again what it would be to want to leave, or we’ll find ourselves cast unto the other outcome and there have none to help as all the help we could have had will do as we’d done and turn His back in what is a show that us He did not know as much as we lived to know Him not.

For such is the fairness of God.

It’s that truth as found continuing to resound from within the words and warnings found within the prophets writings as written to speak unto we victims of what’s long been our own hands holding our own souls and selves inside these cells of things we buy and the more we sell in order to have and hope in what has none to give and gives none of us thus anywhere to go.

Indeed, as I’ve continued to read through both Isaiah and Jeremiah the past several days or weeks I’ve continued to see this general rehashing of this seemingly quiet thrashing of what is a promise’s wording that reads of such a still warning that it’s no wonder as to why so many who are still alive only live as if barely so all so they can continue on as if they know nothing of the trouble we’re all in thanks to what all we’ve all chosen to do. No, it seems that so few here care anything as to the gravity of God’s saying that He won’t listen anymore.

And that’s likely mostly because most in this place stopped calling out to Him a long time ago and so now the same has become our status quo, the life we know in which we go daily along the lanes we’ve known and in which we’ve grown so stubborn and sleek that still we sneak both into the dark and never back out. Why? Because the dark helps us hide.

Or so we think.

But rather the reality is that our every deed is ever before Him and all our words He knows as well. And well, this seems to be a problem for all of us because all of us have both said things and done things, and plenty of both, that we either knew then we shouldn’t say or have since learned we shouldn’t have done. And even the general degree of plausible deniability defined in those mistakes we make that we may not know as mistakes being made in the moment, truth is that it doesn’t really matter.

For in all honesty the line separating truth and reality from moral decay and general depravity is as clear today as it was when He drew it.

Simply because He knows so well what He’s doing that He’s not had to change it since He at first determined to do it. Rather we read that He does not change as we so tend, but that He is instead the same today as He was yesterday and tomorrow will find Him the same as both. All because He is the beginning and the end, the first word and final say, the starting point and the finish line of both all mankind and every other creature or creation currently alive.

And indeed, we’re told that He will hold the same accountable, all of creation, or as Genesis puts it, He will “demand an accounting from every animal”.

Problem then is that the animals aren’t out here shooting one another, burning down cities, practicing the wickedness of idolatry or protesting everything known to man.

No, rather those things and the many like them are only known to man as only we men continue to prove of both the obvious ability but also the sad reality in which we’ve so clearly determined to act upon it. For indeed, every single day it seems that we find the world doing some new form of something so very wrong that it’s taken most often as so novel and new that most of us don’t know what to do. Don’t know what to think. Is this good? Is it bad? How bad could it be? Seems like so many are seemingly enjoying this thing, maybe we should too.

Yes, let’s paint signs and fall in line screaming about how good or bad something is, that’ll surely help make everything all better.

And yet, just as literally as where I live here lately, so too across and upon society does the weather continue to roll in in what are waves upon waves of warnings and wars that aren’t being started by squirrels or rabbits by rather by the wretched refuse who refuse to return from what is a life lived loose and thus left lost in what’s become so many wrong turns taken that we’ve taken the opportunity to just believe in nothing as such is where we know we know how to go and thus what now offers us plenty of evidence of its very existence.

Indeed, we’re a people who believe in nothing simply because that’s what we’ve chased and thus who we’ve become. For the truth is that what you focus on is what you eventually find. And, well, wouldn’t you know it but we have in turn become just like those to whom we’ve turned looking for help from what are all the holes we’ve dug and pits we’ve found and fear we’ve felt in emptying this ground in search of more gold to find in which to hide our ever hope as heled inside what are things that look like gods, are worshiped like gods, are set up as our gods.

But instead they’ve only eyes that do not see, ears that cannot hear, hearts that are carved of either wood, stone or metal and thus haven’t the mettle to know what means something from all that never could. And yes, so too that defines all of us as we trust in the rust of whatever false hope we’ve held inside that which has had our lust.

Yes, we turn continually to that which isn’t God as we know the ease found in doing so.

Because silver and gold are things we can hold that thus depend on us, leaving us to retain the power in this symbiosis in which we’ve come upon only a continued commotion as continues to resound no matter the depth of the ocean or the heights of our haughtiness. No, our rebellion has continued to reach every corner of creation as in the same we find a people still living to die so they can be just like those to whom they turn and upon whom they continue to lean.

And it doesn’t really matter that some of them may seem a live and exist in what are indeed positions of power. No, for the fact remains that all flesh will give an accounting of their every action. And thus all flesh will taste death as such has become the outcome promised unto everything here. And so, as Jeremiah goes on read, “cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the LORD.”

Why?

Because the LORD is LIFE!

And yet instead of turning toward Him and leaning only therein we rather continue to teeter here in between whether we think we should and why so many say we shouldn’t. And we listen to them because, again, they seem to know what they’re doing as they’re the ones continually living these lives that have themselves become idols that we study and serve seeking for ways in which to learn how to get where they’ve gone, leaving us following in footsteps no matter what.

Only never those which lead up the hill and into the grave.

No, for still most here doubt that such is the path that saves and thus opt still for that which proves paved in power and prosperity as we’ve come to imagine them defined.

Leaving us only to one day find that all we’ve found is an endless ability to trust the lost of humanity to somehow not lead us where they themselves so clearly stand. And I say this because, again, all flesh will be judged and thus all of us found entirely wanting in regard to what God wanted us to be. And that’s because in His very image He created you and me and yet instead we’ve chosen the path of those dead and blind to lead us to life.

And granted, a life we’ve found. But friends, a life serving that which comes from this ground is one that has our every trust held inside the cage of something either we or someone else has made to seem like the big deal we should know it isn’t. But alas, still we continue ahead enamored by this pagan pageant in which we worship everything from every celebrity and politician to every skin-care brand they swear by and every single lie that we just can’t see they’re so willing to sell in order to buy our vote.

Why do we care so much about so little? Why has the likes of political posturing and our stance upon the sides drawn for us to choose from become that which we choose to live for? Why do we continue to believe those who literally play parts and read lines for a job? Why do we still place so much awe inside what they sell at the mall or can fit in the mail?

Do we not yet see the jail we’re building?

Another brick is laid or bar put into place every single time we spend even a second more looking to what isn’t God and thus only turns our attention from Him. And well, continuing to so willingly have our attention turned is basically a physical way of saying that we see that something else matters more. And well, doesn’t it stand to reason that eventually God will have had enough of seeing our turning away? Does it not make sense that He would eventually run out of patience for us?

Seeing as how it’s what we’ve all done that asked the death of His Son, doesn’t it seem fair that He would hold us accountable for His blood should we continue to live as if He never came, never died, isn’t there, hasn’t cried?

Friends, we read in Scripture that Jesus wept just after of the death of Lazarus. Why? Because He loves us. Loves us so much that He wants us to live. Wants us to live so much that He died. Wants us to die to what’s caused our doubt so that we can return to Him without any hesitation. But yet He sees daily our hesitating as we continue to sift through this wreckage in process seeking something that could maybe offer us a comparable promise with far less asking so much from us.

And what does He ask?

“To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

But no, we can’t even offer that!

Rather we hate justice, evidenced in how there is no such thing here. We refuse mercy as it asks us to turn cheeks and endure insults and welcome the wicked to continue to jab and poke and prod and laugh and mock as we walk in what is a way they don’t like in which we talk in words they don’t want to hear. And humility? Forget about it! For there’s no profit in it, no power in it, no point in it then.

No, we’re here to win. We’re here to rule. We’re here to prove that we’re the ones in control and if you don’t yet know that we think we are, just look at all the gods we’ve made and the good we’ve done in doing so!

Yes, we’ve become the ones who make gods! To whom then shall we answer when everything in life is seen as a result of our efforts or abilities? To whom shall we give an account when our bank accounts remain filled to the brim and thus us the ones to whom most here turn? Of whom might we fear when all we hold dear is that held so near that we think it something of an armor through which no cost or consequence can come?

Friends, why are we so dumb?

I mean, contrary to all of this painting our faces like warriors and walking around as if we’re the biggest, baddest, toughest thing around, we’re still those who are but a stubbed toe away from a special kind of pain. A splinter ruins our day. Hearing someone say something mean can alter the next week. We’re so easily wounded by things so small and insignificant.

What do we honestly think we’ll prove able to do when literal hell breaks loose?

For such is what we’re promised! We’re told that days are coming, if not already under way, in which the ground will start to fall away and our family and friends will walk away and our world will continue to go the way it’s so clearly determined to already head. And what way is that? Just look around!

Again, all we see anymore is another protest or another tragedy. All we hear are all these debates we’re having and how it’s always the fault of some person in some political office that we’ve been taught to hate. It’s all just become so focused on what’s here and now that we’ve no interest left to give unto He who has left but is coming back.

After all, why look to the clouds and wait them to part when we can gather in crowds and help the world fall apart?

Indeed, I think so much of what’s going on is only going on because we all want to feel like we’re a part of something. But friends, so long as we remain a part of anything here, we have no part in He who is on the way the judge this place with the already expressed determination to destroy it.

Why then continue to live so worried about it? Why continue to give our time and attention to that or they whom shall prove willing victims to said destruction? Why put any of our hope, trust or faith inside anyone, anything that will itself be judged by God and found only lacking?

For you do know that all of us are lacking, right?

All of us are missing something. We all have these holes inside that have been left by all the things we once lived to trust that have since been lost, stolen, broken or thrown away. Each of us have placed our hope inside of things that we once held that we now hold no longer. Should hope truly be seen as this sort of something that’s so easily replaced as to be found again in another trip to Walmart or order from Amazon?

What will we do when the sky breaks loose and Christ come through to do what His Word promised He planned to?

Will all our money save us? Will those voted for take the fall? Will some famous person we adored for the movies they made or the songs they sang be able to sing the song that saves our soul? Will anything in this world that we’ve lived to know help us prove that we lived to know Him?

Will He be willing to admit that He knew us if all He’s seen is us only turning away every chance we get toward everything we still live to get?

Friends, the point of this latest string of posts is the Lord of Hosts already knows both who we are, what we’ve done, and what He intends to do because of it all. And yet what He intends is either to be found in either His sacrifice upon the cross, a hope found by but scant few because it proves we’ve too a life to lose, or in His pouring out that same wrath upon the many who still live as if He didn’t endure all that.

And it all comes down to how we live our lives as the fruit we bear proves what’s been planted inside.

Are we gardens of God or just galleries of gods?

I know we’ve become quite vastly lost in this idea of more. We think that having more means more. That quantity is what matters most, proven perhaps most easily within our modern worry given to the number of followers or subscribers we have. But friends, in the end the only thing that will matter is One. For there is but One Savior, One King, One God.

And all three are the same.

Problem is that He isn’t in what we have so long as what we have has us. Rather He exists outside of time and space and matter and does so because that’s where He asks us to focus. Outside of time. Beyond space. In that which isn’t limited to worldly matter.

And so let us stop living as if the things of this world matter because it’s only a matter of time until all that’s here is found to have no space, no place in the presence of He who so hates what we’ve become in these lives spent worshiping false gods that He plans to just end the whole experiment.

What happens to us when this all ends?

And who do we trust to see us through when it does?

Those who have no eyes to see nor ears to hear? Or the One who’s already where we have the chance to be and got there through the save grave that awaits you and me?

Either way, we’re all going to die. Question is whether or not we’ll find life when we do.

But continuing to look to that which hasn’t any life already sure seems like a really bad way to find life later. And make no mistake, His promise, though coming later, it’s not a matter of if it’s coming.

It’s when will it get here and where we’ll turn when He’s arrived.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold